communication & collaboration: personal impact

MANAGING YOURSELF

How to Pitch a Brilliant Idea Before you even know it, the stranger across the desk

has decided what kind of person you are. Knowing

how you'll be stereotyped allows you to play to -

and control-the other guy's expectations.

by Kimberly D. Elsbach

COMING UP WITH creative ideas is easy; selling them to strangers is hard. All too often, entrepre-

neurs, sales executives, and marketing managers go to great lengths to show how their new business plans or creative concepts are practical and high margin- only to be rejected by corporate deci- sion makers who don't seem to under- stand the real value of the ideas. Why does this happen?

It turns out that the problem has as much to do with the seller's traits as with an idea's inherent quality. The person on the receiving end tends to gauge the pitcher's creativity as well as the pro- posal itself. And judgments about the pitcher's ability to come up with work- able ideas can quickly and permanently overshadow perceptions of the idea's worth. We all like to think that people

judge us carefully and objectively on our merits. But the fact is, they rush to place us into neat little categories - they stereotype us. So the first thing to realize when you're preparing to make a pitch to strangers is that your audience is going to put you into a box. And they're going to do it really fast. Research sug- gests that humans can categorize others in less than 150 milliseconds. Within 30 minutes, they've made lasting judg- ments about your character.

These insights emerged from my lengthy study of the $50 billion U.S. film and television industry. Specifically, I worked with 50 Hollywood executives involved in assessing pitches from screenwriters. Over the course of six years, I observed dozens of 3ominute pitches in which the screenwriters en- countered the "catchers" for the first

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time. In interviewing and observing the pitchers and catchers, I was able to discern just how quickly assessments of creative potential are made in these high-stakes exchanges. (The deals that arise as a result of successful screenplay pitches are often multimillion-dollar projects, rivaling in scope the develop- ment of new car models by Detroit's largest automakers and marketing campaigns by New York's most success- ful advertising agencies.) To determine whether my observations applied to business settings beyond Hollywood, I attended a variety of product-design, marketing, and venture-capital pitch sessions and conducted interviews with executives responsible for judging cre- ative, high-stakes ideas from pitchers previously unknown to them. In those environments, the results were remark- ably similar to what I had seen in the movie business.

People on the receiving end of pitches have no formal, verifiable, or objective measures for assessing that elusive trait, creativity. Catchers-even the expert ones-therefore apply a set of subjective and often inaccurate criteria very early in the encounter, and from that point on, the tone is set. If a catcher detects subtle cues indicating that the pitcher isn't creative, the proposal is toast. But that's not the whole story. I've discov- ered that catchers tend to respond well if they are made to feel that they are participating in an idea's development.

The pitchers who do this successfully are those who tend to be categorized by catchers into one of three prototypes. I call them the showrunner, the artist, and the neophyte. Showrunners come off as professionals who combine cre- ative inspiration with production know- how. Artists appear to be quirky and unpolished and to prefer the world of creative ideas to quotidian reality. Neo- phytes tend to be-or act as if they were - young, inexperienced, and naive. To involve the audience in the creative process, showrunners deliberately level the power differential between them- selves and their catchers; artists invert the differential; and neophytes exploit it If you're a pitcher, the bottom-line im-

plication is this: By successfully project- ing yourself as one of the three creative types and getting your catcher to view himself or herself as a creative collabo- rator, you can improve your chances of selling an idea.

My research also has implications for those who buy ideas: Catchers should beware of relying on stereotypes. It's all too easy to be dazzled by pitchers who ultimately can't get their projects off the ground, and it's just as easy to overlook the creative individuals who can make good on their ideas. That's why it's im- portant for the catcher to test every pitcher, a matter we'll return to in the following pages.

The Sorting Hat In the late 1970s, psychologists Nancy Cantor and Walter Mischel, then at Stanford University, demonstrated that we all use sets of stereotypes-what they called "person prototypes"-to catego- rize strangers in the first moments of interaction. Though such instant type- casting is arguably unfair, pattern match-

ing is so firmly hardwired into human psychology that only conscious disci- pline can counteract it.

Yale University creativity researcher Robert Stemberg contends that the pro- totype matching we use to assess origi- nality in others results from our im- plicit belief that creative people possess certain traits-unconventionality, for example, as well as intuitive ness, sensi- tivity, narcissism, passion, and perhaps youth. We develop these stereotypes through direct and indirect experiences with people known to be creative, from personally interacting with the 15-year- old guitar player next door to hearing stories about Pablo Picasso.

When a person we don't know pitches an idea to us, we search for visual and verbal matches with those implicit models, remembering only the charac- teristics that identify the pitcher as one type or another. We subconsciously

Kimberly D. Elsbach (kdelsbach^ucdavis. edu) is an associate professor of manage- ment at the University of California, Davis.

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How to Pitch a Brilliant Idea • MANAGING YOURSELF

award points to people we can easily identify as having creative traits; we sub- tract points from those who are hard to assess or who fit negative stereotypes.

In hurried business situations in which executives must evaluate dozens of ideas in a week, or even a day, catch- ers are rarely willing to expend the ef- fort necessary to judge an idea more objectively. Like Harry Potter's Sorting Hat, they classify pitchers in a matter of seconds. They use negative stereotyping to rapidly identify the no-go ideas. All you have to do is fall into one of four common negative stereotypes, and the pitch session will be over before it has begun. (For more on these stereotypes, see the sidebar "How to Kill Your Own Pitch.") In fact, many such sessions are strictly a process of elimination; in my experience, only i% of ideas make it be- yond the initial pitch.

Unfortunately for pitchers, type- based elimination is easy, because neg- ative impressions tend to be more salient and memorable than positive ones. To avoid fast elimination, success- ful pitchers-only 25% of those I have observed-turn the tables on the catch- ers by enrolling them in the creative process. These pitchers exude passion for their ideas and find ways to give catchers a chance to shine. By doing so, they induce the catchers to judge them as likable collaborators. Oscar-winning writer, director, and producer Oliver Stone told me that the invitation to col- laborate on an idea is a "seduction." His advice to screenwriters pitching an idea to a producer is to "pull back and project what he needs onto your idea in order to make the story whole for him." The three types of successful pitchers have their own techniques for doing this, as we'll see.

The Showrunner In the corporate world, as in Hollywood, showrunners combine creative thinking and passion with what Sternberg and Todd Lubart, authors of Defying the Crowd: Cultivating Creativity in a Culture of Conformity, call "practical intelli- gence" - a feel for which ideas are likely to contribute to the business. Showrun-

ners tend to display charisma and wit in pitching, say, new design concepts to marketing, but they also demonstrate enough technical know-how to con- vince catchers that the ideas can be de- veloped according to industry-standard practices and within resource con- straints. Though they may not have the most or the best ideas, showrunners are those rare people in organizations who see the majority of their concepts fully implemented.

An example of a showrunner is the legendary kitchen-gadget inventor and pitchman Ron Popeil. Perfectly coiffed and handsome, Popeil is a combination design master and ringmaster. In his New Yorker account of Popeil's phe- nomenally successful Ronco Shovrtime Rotisserie & BBQ, Malcolm Gladwell described how Popeil fuses entertain- ment skills-he enthusiastically show- cases the product as an innovation that will "change your life"-with business

How to Kill Your Own Pitch Before you even get to the stage in the pitch where the catcher catego-

rizes you as a particular creative type, you have to avoid some danger-

ous pigeonholes: the four negative stereotypes that are guaranteed to

kill a pitch. And take care, because negative cues carry more weight

than positive ones.

The pushover would rather unload an idea than defend it. ("I could

do one of these in red, or if you don't like that, I could do it in blue.")

One venture capitalist I spoke with offered the example of an entre-

preneur who was seeking funding for a computer networking start-up.

When the VCs raised concerns about an aspectof the device, the

pitcher simply offered to remove it from the design, leading the

investors to suspect that the pitcher didn't really care about his idea.

The robot presents a proposal too formulaically, as if it had been

memorized from a how-to book. Witness the entrepreneur who re-

sponds to prospective investors'questions about due diligence and

other business details with canned answers from his PowerPoint talk.

The used<ar salesman is tbat obnoxious, argumentative character

too often deployed in consultancies and corporate sales departments.

One vice presidentof marketing told me the story of an arrogant con-

sultant who put in a proposalto her organization. The consultant's

offerwas vaguely intriguing, and she asked him to revise his bid

slightly. Instead of working with her, he argued with her. Indeed, he

tried selling the same package again and again, each time arguing

why his proposal would produce the most astonishing bottom-line

results the company had ever seen. In the end, she grew so tired of

his wheedling insistence and inability to listen courteously to her

feedback that she told him she wasn't interested in seeing any more

bids from him.

The charity case is needy; all he or she wants is a job. I recall a free-

lance consultant who had developed a course for executives on how

to work with independent screenwriters. He could be seen haunting

the halts of production companies, knocking on every open door, giv-

ing the same pitch. As soon as he sensed he was being turned down,

he began pleading with the catcher, saying he really, really needed to

fill some slots to keep his workshop going.

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M A N A G I N G YOURSELF • How to Pitch a Brilliant Idea

savvy. For his television spots, Popeil makes sure that the chickens are roasted to exactly the resplendent golden brown that looks best on camera. And he de- signed the rotisserie's glass front to re- duce glare, so that to the home cook, the revolving, dripping chickens look just as they do on TV.

The first Hollywood pitcher I ob- served was a showrunner. The minute he walked into the room, he scored points with the studio executive as a creative type, in part because of his new, pressed jeans, his fashionable black turtleneck, and his nice sport coat. The clean hair draping his shoulders showed no hint of gray. He had come to pitch a weekly television series based on the legend of Robin Hood. His experience as a marketer was apparent; he opened by mentioning an earlier TV series of his that had been based on a comic book. The pitcher remarked that the series had enjoyed some success as a market- ing franchise, spawning lunch boxes, bath toys, and action figures.

Showrunners create a level playing field by engaging the catcher in a kind of knowledge duet. They typically be- gin by getting the catcher to respond to a memory or some other subject with

Pitcher: We're talking a science fic- tion version of Robin Hood. Robin has a sorcerer in his band of merry men who can conjure up all kinds of scary and wonderful spells.

Catcher: I love it! The pitcher sets up his opportunity

by leading the catcher through a series of shared memories and viewpoints. Specifically, he engages the catcher by asking him to recall and comment on familiar movies. With each response,he senses and then builds on the catcher's knowledge and Interest, eventually guiding the catcher to the core idea by using a word ("twist") that's common to the vocabularies of both producers and screenwriters,

Showrunners also display an ability to improvise, a quality that allows them to adapt if a pitch begins to go awry. Consider the dynamic between the cre- ative director of an ad agency and a prospective client, a major television sports network. As Mallorre Dill re- ported in a 2001 Adweek article on award-winning advertising campaigns, the network's VP of marketing was seek- ing help with a new campaign for cov- erage of the upcoming professional bas- ketball season, and the ad agency was

Showrunners deliberately level the power dijferentlal

between themselves and their catchers; artists invert

the differential; and neophytes exploit it

which the showrunner is familiar. Con- sider this give-and-take:

Pitcher; Remember Errol Flynn's Robin Hood?

Catcher: Oh, yeah. One of my all-time favorites as a kid.

Pitcher: Yes, it was classic. Then, of course, came Costner's version.

Catcher: That was much darker. And it didn't evoke as much passion as the original.

Pitcher: But the special effects were great.

Catcher: Yes, they were. Pitcher: That's the twist I want to in-

clude in this new series. Catcher: Special effects?

invited to make a pitch. Prior to the meeting, the network executive stressed to the agency that the campaign would have to appeal to local markets across the United States while achieving "street credibility" with avid fans.

The agency's creative director and its art director pitched the idea of digitally inserting two average teenagers into video of an NBA game. Initially, the catcher frowned on the idea, wonder- ing aloud if viewers would find it arro- gant and aloof. So the agency duo ad- libbed a rap that one teen could recite after scoring on all-star Shaquiile O'Neal: "I'm fresh like a can of picante. And I'm deeper than Dante in the cir-

cles of hell." The catcher was taken aback at first; then he laughed. Invited to participate in the impromptu rap session, the catcher began inserting his own lines. When the fun was over, the presenters repitched their idea with a slight variation-inserting the teenagers into videos of home-team games for local markets - and the account was sold to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Real showrunners are rare - only 20% of the successful pitchers I observed would qualify. Consequently, they are in high demand, which is good news for pitchers who can demonstrate the right combination of talent and expertise.

The Artist Artists, too, display single-minded pas- sion and enthusiasm about their ideas, but they are less slick and conformist in their dress and mannerisms, and they tend to be shy or socially awkward. As one Hollywood producer told me,"The more shy a writer seems, the better you think the writing is, because you assume they're living in their internal world." Unlike shov^runners, artists appear to have little or no knowledge of, or even interest in, the details of implementa- tion. Moreover, they invert the power differential by completely commanding the catcher's imagination. Instead of engaging the catcher in a duet, they put the audience in thrall to the content. Artists are particularly adept at con- ducting what physicists call "thought experiments," inviting the audience into imaginary worlds.

One young screenwriter 1 observed fit the artist type to perfection. He wore black leather pants and a torn T-shirt, several earrings in each ear, and a tattoo on his slender arm. His hair was rum- pled, his expression was brooding: Van Gogh meets Tim Burton. He cared little about the production details for the dark, violent cartoon series he imag- ined; rather, he was utterly absorbed by the unfolding story. He opened his pitch like this: "Picture what happens when a bullet explodes inside some- one's brain. Imagine it in slow motion. There is the shattering blast, the tidal

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How to Pitch 3 Br i l l iant Idea • M A N A G I N G YOURSELF

wave of red, the acrid smell of gunpow- der. That's the opening scene in this an- imated sci-fi flick." He then proceeded to lead his catchers through an exciting, detailed narrative of his film, as a mas- ter storyteller would. At the end, the executives sat back, smiling, and told the writer they'd like to go ahead with his idea.

In the business world, artists are sim- ilarly nonconformist. Consider Alan, a product designer at a major packaged- foods manufacturer. I observed Alan in a meeting with business-development executives he'd never met. He had come to pitch an idea based on the premise that children like to play with their food. The proposal was for a cereal with pieces that interlocked in such a way that children could use them for build- ing things, Legos style. With his pocket- protected laboratory coat and horn- rimmed glasses, Alan looked very much the absent-minded professor. As he en- tered the conference room where the suited-and-tied executives at his com- pany had assembled, he hung back, ap- parently uninterested in the Power- Point slides or the marketing and revenue projections of the business- development experts. His appearance and reticence spoke volumes about him. His type was unmistakable.

When it was Alan's turn, he dumped four boxes of prototype cereal onto the mahogany conference table, to the stunned silence of the executives. Ignor- ing protocol, he began constructing an elaborate fort, all the while talking furi- ously about the qualities of the com fiour that kept the pieces and the struc- ture together. Finally, he challenged the executives to see who could build the tallest tower. The executives so enjoyed the demonstration that they green- lighted Alan's project.

While artists-who constituted about 40% of the successful pitchers I ob- served-are not as polished as show- runners, they are the most creative of the three types. Unlike showrunners and neophytes, artists are fairly transparent. It's harder to fake the part. In other words, they don't play to type; they are the type. Indeed, it is very difficult for

someone who is not an artist to pretend to be one, because genuineness is what makes the artist credible.

The Neophyte Neophytes are the opposite of show- runners. Instead of displaying their ex- pertise, they plead ignorance. Neophytes score points for daring to do the impos- sible, something catchers see as refresh- ing. Unencumbered by tradition or past successes, neophytes present themselves as eager learners. They consciously ex- ploit the power differential between pitcher and catcher by asking directly

pitch session. The fellow looked as though he had walked off the set of Doogie Howser, M.D. With his infectious smile, he confided to his catchers that he was not going to pitch them a typical show, "mainly because I've never done one. But I think my inexperience here might be a blessing."

He showed the catchers a variety of drumming moves, then asked one per- son in his audience to help him come up with potential camera angles-such as looking out from inside the drum or viewing it from overhead-inquiring how these might play on the screen.

and boldly for help-not in a desperate way, but with the confidence of a bril- liant favorite, a talented student seeking sage advice from a beloved mentor.

Consider the case of one neophyte pitcher I observed, a young, ebullient screenwriter who had just returned from his first trip to Japan. He wanted to develop a show about an American kid (like himself) who travels to Japan to learn to play taiko drums, and he brought his drums and sticks into the

When the catcher got down on his hands and knees to show the neophyte a particularly "cool" camera angle, the pitch turned into a collaborative teach- ing session. Ignoring his lunch appoint- ment, the catcher spent the next half hour offering suggestions for weaving the story of the young drummer into a series of taiko performances in which artistic camera angles and imaginative lighting and sound would be used to mirror the star's emotions.

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Many entrepreneurs are natural neo- phytes. Lou and Sophie McDermott, two sisters from Australia, started the Savage Sisters sportswear line in the late 1990s. Former gymnasts with petite builds and spunky personalities, they cartwheeled into the clothing business with no formal training in fashion or finance, instead, they relied heavily on their enthusiasm and optimism and a keen curiosity about the fine points of retailing to get a start in the highly com- petitive world of teen fashion. On their shopping outings at local stores, the McDermott sisters studied merchandis- ing and product placement-all the while asking store owners how they got started, according to the short docu- mentary film Cutting Their Own Chth.

The McDermott sisters took advan- tage of their inexperience to learn all they could. They would ask a store

and neophytes can win the day through enchantment and charm. From the catcher's perspective, however, show- runners can also be the most dangerous of all pitchers, because they are the most likely to blind through glitz.

Catchers Beware

When business executives ask me for my insights about creativity in Holly- wood, one of the first questions they put to me is, "Why is there so much bad television?" After hearing the stories I've told here, they know the answer: Hollywood executives too often let themselves be wooed by positive stereo- types-particularly that of the show- runner -rather than by the quality of the ideas. Indeed, individuals who become adept at conveying impressions of cre- ative potential, while lacking the real thing, may gain entry into organizations

If they rely too heavily on stereotypes, idea buyers might

overlook creative individuals who can truly deliver the goods.

owner to give them a tour of the store, and they would pose dozens of ques- tions: "Why do you buy this line and not the other one? Why do you put this dress here and not there? What are your customers like? What do they ask for most?" Instead of being annoying, the McDermotts were charming, friendly, and fun, and the fiattered retailers enjoyed being asked to share their knowledge. Once they had struck up a relationship with a retailer, the sisters would offer to bring in samples for the store to test. Eventually, the McDer- motts parlayed what they had learned into enough knowledge to start their own retail line. By engaging the store owners as teachers, the McDermotts were able to build a network of expert mentors who wanted to see the neo- phytes win. Thus neophytes, who con- stitute about 40% of successful pitchers, achieve their gains largely by sheer force of personality.

Which of the three types is most likely to succeed? Overwhelmingly, catchers look for showrunners, though artists

and reach prominence there based on their social infiuence and impression- management skills, to the catchers' detriment.

Real creativi^ isn't so easily classified. Researchers such as Sternberg and Lubart have found that people's implicit theories regarding the attributes of creative individuals are off the mark. Furthermore, studies have identified numerous personal attributes that fa- cilitate practical creative behavior. For example, cognitive fiexibility, a pen- chant for diversity, and an orientation toward problem solving are signs of creativity; it simply isn't true that cre- ative types can't be down-to-earth.

Those who buy ideas, then, need to be aware that relying too heavily on stereo- types can cause them to overlook cre- ative individuals who can truly deliver the goods. In my interviews with studio executives and agents, I heard numer- ous tales of people who had developed reputations as great pitchers but who had trouble producing usable scripts. The same thing happens in business.

One well-known example occurred in 1985, when Coca-Cola announced it was changing the Coke formula. Based on pitches from market researchers who had tested the sweeter, Pepsi-like "new Coke" in numerous focus groups, the company's top management decided that the new formula could effectively compete with Pepsi. The idea was a mar- keting disaster, of course. There was a huge backlash, and the company was forced to reintroduce the old Coke. In a later discussion of the case and the im- portance of relying on decision makers who are both good pitchers and indus- try experts, Roberto Goizueta, Coca- Cola's CEO at the time, said to a group of MBAs, in effect, that there's nothing so dangerous as a good pitcher with no real talent.

If a catcher senses that he or she is being swept away by a positive stereo- type match, it's important to test the pitcher. Fortunately, assessing the vari- ous creative types is not difficult. In a meeting with a showrunner, for exam- ple, the catcher can test the pitcher's expertise and probe into past experi- ences, just as a skilled job interviewer would, and ask how the pitcher would react to various changes to his or her idea. As for artists and neophytes, the best way to judge their ability is to ask them to deliver a finished product. In Hollywood, smart catchers ask artists and neophytes for finished scripts be- fore hiring them. These two types may be unable to deliver specifics about costs or implementation, but a prototype can allow the catcher to judge quality, and it can provide a concrete basis for further discussion. Finally, it's important to en- list the help of other people in vetting pitchers. Another judge or two can help a catcher weigh the pitcher's-and the idea's-pros and cons and help safe- guard against hasty judgments.

One CEO of a Northern California de- sign firm looks beyond the obvious ear- marks of a creative type when hiring a new designer. She does this by asking not only about successful projects but also about work that failed and what the designer learned from the failures. That way, she can find out whether the

122 HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW

prospect is capable of absorbing lessons well and rolling with the punches of an unpredictable work environment. The CEO also asks job prospects what they collect and read, as well as what inspires them. These kinds of clues tell her about the applicant's creative bent and think- ing style. If an interviewee passes these initial tests, the CEO has the prospect work with the rest of her staff on a mock design project. These diverse interview tools give her a good indication about the prospect's ability to combine cre- ativity and organizational skills, and they help her understand how well the applicant will fit into the group.

One question for pitchers, of course, might be, "How do I make a positive impression if I don't fit into one of the three creative stereotypes?" If you al- ready have a reputation for delivering on creative promises, you probably don't need to disguise yourself as a showrunner, artist, or neophyte-a r^- sumi§ full of successes is the best calling card of all. But if you can't rely on your reputation, you should at least make an attempt to match yourself to the type you feel most comfortable with, if only because it's necessary to get a foot in the catcher's door. •

Another question might be, "What if 1 don't want the catcher's input into the development of my idea?" This aspect of the pitch is so important that you should make it a priority: Find a part of your proposal that you are willing to yield on and invite the catcher to come up with suggestions. In fact, my obser- vations suggest that you should engage the catcher as soon as possible in the de- velopment of the idea. Once the catcher feels like a creative collaborator, the odds of rejection diminish.

Ultimately, the pitch will always re- main an imperfect process for commu- nicating creative ideas. But by being aware of stereotyping processes and the value of collaboration, both pitchers and catchers can understand the differ- ence between a pitch and a hit. ^

Reprint R0309J To order, see page 135.

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